Vegetarian, Disney loving, Homeschoolers in SoCal

I used the beach as my inspiration for the bento. It’s supposed to be an overhead perspective, hence the whale (cut from nori) in the upper corner. The placement was questionable enough that the younger Anc thought it was a cloud. The boat is made of a slice of cucumber sliced in two and stacked, topped with two triangles of cheese, also stacked. The water is simply rice steamed in blue water. I used a cup of water with about 4 drops of food coloring and steamed half a cup of arborio rice on the stove. Taste was not altered. The sand is a mixture of soy crumbles and grated carrots simmered in a soy sauce, grated ginger, and mirin. That was tasty enough that it influenced the dinner I cooked later that night. I usually give Daisy less food than Tabitha so to make her serving smaller I didn’t pile the crumbles or rice as high. As I did not flavor the rice, I told the girls to eat the things on top, then mix the crumbles and rice together to eat.

I strive for protein, dairy, carb, vegetable, and fruit in every bento but there wasn’t any place to incorporate fruit so I simply gave a side of oranges and watermelon.

I was asked at park how long these lunches take me and I’ll be honest, I set aside a good hour to get these done. Some websites talk about it only taking 15-minutes to pack, but I cook it all from scratch, rarely relying on leftovers. Since I often incorporate rice, that’s usually 45-minutes right there just for it to cook in the steamer. Though as mentioned above I did go the stove route for this one and that took less time, but when I make onigiri (molded rice) I much prefer it to be properly steamed. When book club starts up again in the fall, I’ll have to figure out a way to streamline the process since we’ll leave home much earlier than we are now.